Too early to remove this column from the database. But since WorPress knows if the active theme supports menus, and if there is at least one menu created, the UI field for the menu order of a page may be removed in the case. A theme or a plugin may also bring the UI back, even if the theme supports menus, but no menues are yet created.

A visible "menu order" for pages may be misleading and confusing for new users of WordPress, using Twenty Ten or another menu aware theme, not knowing the history of WordPress.

This dependant UI removal may be a way to prepare for a future removal of the menu_order column. WordPress 3.0 made this field practically obsolete. Some day it should be marked as such and then removed.

Just wanted to throw my two cents in, I don't think this should ever be removed. There are way to many uses for the menu_order for automated listing where you don't want to have to create menus each time. Sometimes listing the pages is the best method but menu order is still the sorting method.

To a certain extent, yes, menus have made it much easier to reorder content, but only if you plan on using menus to list content. And what about other custom post types that support page-attributes?

I'm fully aware we're not talking about removing the field, just the UI, but short of having to install a plugin to manually reorder, you're basically then stuck with whatever the default ordering is when invoking menu_order (unless I'm missing something). That's lame.

By all means, remove the bits from the meta box on the edit screen and quick edit, but either replace the ui/ux in the list tables (drag n drop?) or leave it alone.

There are definitely times that one might use the menu order, especially if it's not a menu that's the output :) Lists of child pages within content, utilizing the menu order to order alternate kinds of content (slides in a slider or some such), etc. There are some plugins that address it nicely in terms of drag-and-drop experience, such as ​http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-page-ordering/, but even then we'd have to think of what the no-JS/accessible alternative interaction would be.

Man, 17 month ago me wasn't doing too shabby. Would still love to see what we could do to have a better page ordering interaction - wouldn't be surprised if there are some other duplicate tickets kicking around. Maybe no-JS support is as simple as keeping the field and hiding it when JS is available, and we can look into accessibility links like the menus system has. The checkbox column has some vertical space, could do arrows, maybe.

I guess there are some base issues with drag-and-drop, though, like what you do over a page break in the list table. Anybody want to explore this some more? The plugin is a great start (and not just saying that out of bias).

Also marking as a good-first-bug - not necessarily a walk in the park, but pretty self-contained.